Current AffairsCenturies-old 'Budweiser Bier' heading for St Louis to take on American giant

There's a new Czech lager on the American market with a centuries old
tradition and a highly contentious name: Budweiser Bier. That's beer spelt
the German way, b-i-e-r. But it should come as no surprise that
Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis -- the world's largest brewer and the maker of
Budweiser beer, b-e-e-r, is having none of it. And so, just as the lager
known here as Budweiser Budvar must be sold as Czechvar in the States,
this relative newcomer to the Budweiser trademark battle will be labelled
B.B. Burgerbrau, although marketed as "beer from the Czech city of
Budweis."

Budejovicky Mestansky Pivovar, or BMP, was founded in 1792, claims to be
the oldest brewery in Ceske Budejovice, the southern Bohemian city known
also as Budweis in German. The lager it is now reintroducing to the States
was first brewed in 1802 and called "Budweiser Burgerbrau," or
Budweis city brew.

This label will read 'B.B. Burgerbrau' on bottles sold in the US
The Americans registered their "Budweiser" trademark in 1876;
the Czech's "Budweiser Budvar" was first brewed in 1895. But the
Director of Sales for the BMP Brewery, Miroslav Zeman, says that although
his brewery had a 75-year jump on its rivals, it lost a lot of valuable
time in the Budweiser trademark battle thanks to communism.

"Both [of them] are claiming that they are the 'original'
Budweiser.
Our position is difficult because, in a way, the most serious damage to
this brewery was during communism, and a lot of [trademark] registrations
were made by both rivals during that time. So we are kind of latecomers in
many, many markets. So we need to protect our rights and, slowly, in some
markets we've been successful -such as in Greece and Austria- and in
others, less successful."

After the Communists nationalised the brewery in 1948, it was pressured
into giving up trademark rights and into adopting less German-sounding
names for its products, like Samson and Crystal. Mr Zeman says it was also
told to reduce the alcohol content for these new "workers'
brews."

Budweiser Budvar (or Czechvar in the US)
Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the new Czech democratic
government reinstated BMP's domestic right to use the "Budweiser
Bier" and "B.B. Burgerbrau" trademarks, and the two-hundred
year old lager appeared on the shelves in the late 1990s. It is brewed
today in the same place with the same recipe, ingredients and brewing
methods from the 1800s.

The US advertising campaign will play the history card, says Rob Neuner,
president of Classic Beverages, which is the exclusive importer of BB
Burgerbrau in the States.

The American Budweiser"Anheuser-Busch has their Budweiser, which was started in 1876
and
Budweiser Burgerbrau was actually first branded in 1802, whereas Budvar
was actually branded 20 years after Anheuser-Busch. So we have the
historical perspective, which we like to play up here."

Classic Beverages started introducing the beer to big cities like Chicago
and New York in April. They plan a national roll out of the brand in about
six months time - but hope to launch in St Louis, home to rival
Anheuser-Busch, by the end of September.

"We're not calling the beer 'Budweiser' for this country [USA],
we're
calling it 'BB Burgerbrau,' but what we are able to say is that it is from
the Czech city of Budweis. And we're not using so much the term Ceske
Budejovice -- for two reasons; one, that most people refer to the city as
Budweis and secondly, most Americans can't pronounce Ceske
Budejovice."